An Evening Hike - Following the Sheep Trail

On Sunday evening, after a short break to regroup, Beth and I went walking again, to the south part of Iona again. Since I had purchased a map earlier in the day we were able to take a short cut and get to the golf course faster. There we encountered another hiker who told us we were on the right path to Saint Columba’s Bay (which is where he was supposed to have initially landed when first arriving at Iona from Ireland).

After some hiking over hill and dale we made it to the beach. This was not a sandy beach, but rather one covered in large pebbles and stones. We found some more examples of cool rocks (we are bringing home a few samples as crazy as that sounds). I also recorded the very cool sound of the waves breaking on this stony beach.

From there we went looking for the marble quarry. A guide yesterday said it was a bit difficult to get to, but worth the effort, so we were putting in the effort. We didn’t find the path marked on the map so we ended up climbing over some difficult terrain, but eventually we found the abandoned marble quarry. The altar in the Abbey was made from marble taken from this quarry, and it was a beautiful work of art. It was hard to imagine such a beautiful item coming from such a place as the quarry, which seemed to be primarily chunks of rock of varying sizes, albeit differently coloured than all the other rock on the island. We found a small piece of marble with some green in it (similar to the green rocks we found earlier), so into my pocket it went, another unusual souvenir from Iona.

From the Marble Quarry we took what I thought was a trail back marked on the map, but in reality it turned out to be nothing more than a sheep trail. It‘s a good thing Iona isn’t that big, so we couldn’t get really lost. So up and down over the hilly terrain we went making our way back to the village. In some of the low spots we encountered the famous Scottish bogs - and first Beth, then myself got our shoes muddy and wet. Walking over such soft ground was a new experience for me, used to the dry hard ground of the prairies.

Eventually we spotted the road we needed to get back to our B&B - where we changed our shoes and pants and went to eat, both of us being famished by this point (about 9 PM). The restaurant (same one as yesterday) was nice enough to serve us, even though we were there right at closing time (for the restaurant part anyway, the bar part remained open later). The fish and chips we both had tasted mighty good after so much hiking around (and since we hadn’t eaten a proper meal since breakfast).

Beth fell fast asleep, even with the lights on (as I was working on the computer, trying to catch up with my notes taking and picture transferring.) After a short bit, I couldn’t keep my eyes opened, so I joined Beth in the land of Zees.